


Little Brown Birds

by Dreamer_of_Improbable_Dreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animals, Bird, Gen Fic, Gentle Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 00:14:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10424979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamer_of_Improbable_Dreams/pseuds/Dreamer_of_Improbable_Dreams
Summary: Sam is afraid of his own size and strength when confronted with a diminutive vision of perfection in the form of a tiny brown bird with green eyes





	

Sam.cant help but be afraid of his own strength as he stares wide eyed at the tiny brown bird cupped in his palms.  
It's so tiny against his immense size and Sam is afraid of its fragility. The way it's tiny perfect legs are so twig thin they could snap like toothpicks between his fingers. It's tiny perfect toes digging tiny perfect claws into his skin.  
It's tiny and a soft brown and fluffed into a perfect ball with its head tucked into its shoulders.

Sam's never really handled such fragility. His hands are rough and huge and blunt. Fingers used to the safe delicacy of handling cursed objects and ancient crumbling papers and weapons that spit fire, not the urgent dangerous fragility of spun glass life beating hot and fast heartbeats against his calluses.

When he was eight a robin flew into the window of their motel room and broke its neck. He had cried as he tried to prop its lolling head in his too small hands. Dean helped Sam bury it in the flower pot beside the door when its eyes had faded.

Feathers improbably tiny and softer then air and the gleam of a minuscule beak. The perfection is mesmerizing.

The little brown bird in Sam's hands cocks it's head and warbles at him, staring at him with impossibly green eyes.

"Don't worry Dean, I've got you."

 

Part II

A little brown bird with eerie green eyes that Sam is afraid to touch for fear of crushing.  
And yet afraid to release for fear of loss.  
"It's ok. I've got you. You're safe."  
The words are more for Sam's comfort then to soothe Dean's frightened puff of feathers.  
He's so afraid.  
So afraid of his killer's hands stained with blood and ashes.  
He has never once been afraid of Dean's fragility.  
Never feared to press against him with hands that help or harm. Never been afraid to put pressure on broken bones and skin and hold slick sliding blood inside his brother's body with the force of his own strength. Even when his brother's skin paled and his heart staggered Sam wasn't afraid that his touch would break his brother's body like thin ice.  
He is terrified to brush even cloud soft fingers across perfect fluffed up feathers.  
His heart races and his fingers shake and sweat gathers.  
He is so afraid of this tiny breakable body in his too big hands.  
Dean opens his shiny little beak and warbles at him, glaring up with beady green eyes glittering.  
Sam can almost hear the words 'calm down Sammy. We got this. We'll find the witch that did this and fix it.'   
He almost feels comforted by the soft sweet sound.

 

Once the bird is tucked into a cardboard box on the front seat of the Impala, Dean's cassette tapes an unceremonious pile on the floor, and out of his crushing hands Sam relaxes enough to think.  
To look at the diminutive brown bird nestled into an old tshirt like antique china and wonder what sort of bird it might be. And why that one. Sam would have expected Dean to be something bigger. With killing claws and a sharp beak.  
But something about the small ball of soft brown feathers and vulnerability reminds  
Sam inescapably of his brother. When he's soft and sleeping or the smile on his face when he's truly happy.  
He wishes he weren't so afraid to touch.  
He wonders what it says about him that he locks his tiny brother in a cardboard box to keep him safe because he doesn't trust his own hands with those glass brittle bones.  
He wishes his hands weren't quite so big.


End file.
